Personal computers (PCs) provided with a touchpad generally implement a function to disable the touchpad to prevent the touchpad from interfering with key input operation. When the touchpad is disabled by this function, a mouse pointer (mouse cursor) will not be displayed or moved on the screen even if an operation is performed on the touchpad.
However, even when the touchpad is disabled by the above-described function, predetermined processing occurs in the CPU of the PC if an operation is performed on the touchpad. More specifically, even though the touchpad is disabled, an operation on the touchpad is unnecessarily notified to the CPU in a manner similar to that of the case of displaying the mouse pointer, and thus unnecessary processing to discard this notification occurs in the CPU. Therefore, even when the touchpad is disabled, the above-described unnecessary processing occurs in the CPU of the PC if the user mistakenly touches the touchpad, and this leads to a problem of increase in power consumption.
Therefore, there are demands for a new technique to overcome the above-described problem.